Even the most inaccurate book, considered trash by many, can have a fortunate result.

I wouldn't be a buddhist but for coming across The Third Eye by Lobsang Rampa when I was about 13 years old and still an ardent Christian. It was a quarter of a century later, during a time of heartbreak, that I began a search for something other than Christianity - and the foundations had been laid by the fraudulent book I had read when a young teenager.

mettaChris

---The trouble is that you think you have time------Worry is the Interest, paid in advance, on a debt you may never owe------It's not what happens to you in life that is important ~ it's what you do with it ---

Even the most inaccurate book, considered trash by many, can have a fortunate result.

Or it may lead one down the garden path. You just never know.

Caveat lector. The nice thing about youth is that there is there is the delightfully slaphappy illusion of a considerable amount of time available, so one can read all sorts of things, and maybe get lucky. With age, however, I'd rather use my time a bit more wisely, taking a bit more care in what I read, having read my share of crap books.

This being is bound to samsara, kamma is his means for going beyond. -- SN I, 38.

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” HPatDH p.723

>> Do you see a man wise[enlightened/ariya]in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.<<-- Proverbs 26:12

At any age, life is only as long as your out-breath ~ if you don't breathe in again.

mettaChris

---The trouble is that you think you have time------Worry is the Interest, paid in advance, on a debt you may never owe------It's not what happens to you in life that is important ~ it's what you do with it ---

Even the most inaccurate book, considered trash by many, can have a fortunate result.

I wouldn't be a buddhist but for coming across The Third Eye by Lobsang Rampa when I was about 13 years old and still an ardent Christian. It was a quarter of a century later, during a time of heartbreak, that I began a search for something other than Christianity - and the foundations had been laid by the fraudulent book I had read when a young teenager.

mettaChris

Same here. To this day I wonder what would have happened if I had not stumbled across The Third Eye so early on. I suspect I owe an embarrassingly large debt to Lobsang Rampa and this screwball book.

Hi Catmoon and ChrisOn another thread I asked if it would be fair to say your Kamma leads you to find a teaching. Bhikku Pesala suggested that spiritual inclination has everything to do with Kamma. If so, maybe that lousy book you read as a teenager should not get credit for your current happy state as Buddhists.

My definition of a bad resource is a book that:A) Perhaps contains one or two good ideas, but many other nonsensical ones that you follow, only to find later were wrong,B) Focusses too narrowly one one aspect of the path, thereby presenting the reader with a skewed perspective, C) Tries to re-define the subject in light of psychology or "self-help"D) Is just plain wrong!Not too much stuff in the D category, but enough to be wary. And lots of others in the A, B and C. I know, I've read most of them, or so it seems!

Last edited by Hanzze on Sun Oct 31, 2010 7:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Just that! *smile*...We Buddhists must find the courage to leave our temples and enter the temples of human experience, temples that are filled with suffering. If we listen to Buddha, Christ, or Gandhi, we can do nothing else. The refugee camps, the prisons, the ghettos, and the battlefields will become our temples. We have so much work to do. ... Peace is Possible! Step by Step. - Samtach Preah Maha Ghosananda "Step by Step" http://www.ghosananda.org/bio_book.html

BUT! it is important to become a real Buddhist first. Like Punna did: Punna Sutta Nate sante baram sokham _()_

Personally, I can't stand Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh - - 'Christo-Buddhism' imo. I've bitched and/or moaned about the good Venerable before here on Dhamma Wheel. I feel he tries to mind-meld Buddhist principles into Christianity to make it more 'palatable' for westerners. His concept of 'inter-is-ness' sounds to me like a gooshy-we're-all-one love fest.

But that's just me.

I'm also no van of Ven. Pema Chodron - here's some excerpts from an interview where she shares her thoughts on Trungpa Rinpoche - a notorious personage.

Tricycle: Stories of Trungpa Rinpoche's sexual encounters with students still upset a lot of people. Have they ever upset you?

Pema Chodron: No. But he upset me. He upset me a lot. I couldn't con him, and that was uncomfortable. But it was exactly what I needed. Sometimes, in certain situations, I can see how I'm a con artist, and I can see how I'm just trying to make everything pretty and smooth, and all I have to do is think of Rinpoche and I get honest. He has the effect on me of relentlessly—in a dedicated way—keeping me honest. And that's not always comfortable.

Tricycle: How did he respond to your choice of celibacy?

Pema Chodron: He encouraged me to be very strict with my vows.

Tricycle:In recent years women have become more articulate about sexism. And we know more today about the prevalence of child abuse and about how many people come into dharma really hurting. If you knew ten years ago what you know today, would you have been so optimistic about Trungpa Rinpoche and his sexuality? Would you have wanted some of the women you've been working with to study with him, given their histories of sexual abuse?

Pema Chodron: I would have said, You know he loves women, he's very passionate, and has a lot of relationships with women, and that might be part of it if you get involved with him, and you should read all his books, go to all his talks, and actually see if you can get close to him. And you should do that knowing you might get an invitation to sleep with him, so don't be naive about that, and don't think you have to do it, or don't have to do it. But you have to decide for yourself who you think this guy is.

Tricycle:Would you say that the intention behind this unconventional behavior, including his sexual exploits and his drinking, was to help others?

Pema Chodron: As the years went on, I felt everything he did was to help others. But I would also say now that maybe my understanding has gone even deeper, and it feels more to the point to say I don't know. I don't know what he was doing. I know he changed my life. I know I love him. But I don«t know who he was. And maybe he wasn't doing things to help everyone, but he sure helped me. I learned something from him. But who was that masked man?

Someone's who's this daft and dizzy - I don't like and I don't recommend to anyone.

Vepacitta wrote:Personally, I can't stand Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh - - 'Christo-Buddhism' imo. I've bitched and/or moaned about the good Venerable before here on Dhamma Wheel. I feel he tries to mind-meld Buddhist principles into Christianity to make it more 'palatable' for westerners. His concept of 'inter-is-ness' sounds to me like a gooshy-we're-all-one love fest.

But that's just me.

I'm also no van of Ven. Pema Chodron - here's some excerpts from an interview where she shares her thoughts on Trungpa Rinpoche - a notorious personage.

Tricycle: Stories of Trungpa Rinpoche's sexual encounters with students still upset a lot of people. Have they ever upset you?

Pema Chodron: No. But he upset me. He upset me a lot. I couldn't con him, and that was uncomfortable. But it was exactly what I needed. Sometimes, in certain situations, I can see how I'm a con artist, and I can see how I'm just trying to make everything pretty and smooth, and all I have to do is think of Rinpoche and I get honest. He has the effect on me of relentlessly—in a dedicated way—keeping me honest. And that's not always comfortable.

Tricycle: How did he respond to your choice of celibacy?

Pema Chodron: He encouraged me to be very strict with my vows.

Tricycle:In recent years women have become more articulate about sexism. And we know more today about the prevalence of child abuse and about how many people come into dharma really hurting. If you knew ten years ago what you know today, would you have been so optimistic about Trungpa Rinpoche and his sexuality? Would you have wanted some of the women you've been working with to study with him, given their histories of sexual abuse?

Pema Chodron: I would have said, You know he loves women, he's very passionate, and has a lot of relationships with women, and that might be part of it if you get involved with him, and you should read all his books, go to all his talks, and actually see if you can get close to him. And you should do that knowing you might get an invitation to sleep with him, so don't be naive about that, and don't think you have to do it, or don't have to do it. But you have to decide for yourself who you think this guy is.

Tricycle:Would you say that the intention behind this unconventional behavior, including his sexual exploits and his drinking, was to help others?

Pema Chodron: As the years went on, I felt everything he did was to help others. But I would also say now that maybe my understanding has gone even deeper, and it feels more to the point to say I don't know. I don't know what he was doing. I know he changed my life. I know I love him. But I don«t know who he was. And maybe he wasn't doing things to help everyone, but he sure helped me. I learned something from him. But who was that masked man?

Someone's who's this daft and dizzy - I don't like and I don't recommend to anyone.

Not a big fan of D. Suzuki either.

We take firm stances here on Mt. Meru!

V.

THANK YOU!!!!

I cannot tolerate Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh either, nor can I stomach any writer who attempts to fuse disparate religious traditions together as if there's no difference at all. I am not anti-Christian or anti anything, but there are significant differences between Buddhism and other religions, and to assume that Buddha and Jesus would agree on everything is naive.

At first, I found books by Hanh to be quite moving. I still think Hanh's Understanding the Heart of Wisdom is a great book on the Heart Sutra. But as I inspect his work closer I just can't help but see his books as mushy, airy New Age dreck. My rule of thumb is that if you go to your local bookstore and see an entire shelf dedicated to an author (like Hanh), then ninety percent of their assembly-line style books are probably no good.

Also, once you go on Oprah, you've lost me forever.

I don't care for Stephen Batchelor either. I thought Buddhism Without Beliefs was a decent read at first, but after actually trying to study some of the Tipitaka for myself, it's obvious he's become more and more interested in reinterpreting Buddhism to fit his materialistic worldview. I glanced through is Confessions of A Buddhist Atheist...he basically has Buddha parroting his own agnostic standpoints on concepts like kamma and rebirth.

I also became sick to my stomach when I saw that Deepak Chopra had published a "biography" of Buddha.

Josh

"Indeed, the Blessed One is worthy and rightly self-awakened, consummate in knowledge & conduct, well-gone, an expert with regard to the world, unexcelled as a trainer for those people fit to be tamed, the Teacher of divine & human beings, awakened, blessed." — AN 11.12

alan wrote:P.S. I threw it out the window a few years ago, so please don't ask my to quote what it was that bugged me.

Why throw a book out of the window? Even if you disagree with it, there is no use destroying it, the best thing to do if you disagree with a book is to read it and analyse why you disagree with it. To destroy a book is to destroy knowledge, whether or not you agree with it, something can be learned from any book.

Besides its littering...

"For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."

Nana - a person like that - who can barely tell the difference between right and wrong - who cannot even admit that the behaviour of her teacher was morally reprehensible - who has said in one of her talks that I picked up at the local library "well, I can't even say what's right or wrong ... " is not - in my opinion - a very sorted out person.

How did I come to this conclusion about her - by doing a lot of reading - listening - and not liking what I saw. I look at people's actions and words - not their robes.

Just because someone is an ordained religious (of whatever religion) doesn't mean that one cannot voice their opinion about them - strongly. That sort of thinking has led to the vilest abuses of the populace by persons of various religious orders throughout history.